With CM Punk retaining the WWE Championship against Ryback and John Cena at Survivor Series on Sunday, thereby likely solidifying an expected match with Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson at Royal Rumble, the sports-entertainment organization’s creative team has discussed a scenario where The Straight Edge Superstar would defeat The Great One at the annual January pay-per-view event. This would subsequently lead to Punk defending the title against The Undertaker at WrestleMania XXIX, and Johnson facing Cena in a non-title re-match at the same event.

Original creative plans called for Johnson to defeat Punk at the Rumble, leading to a match against Cena for the title—which could still occur. Creative has given thought to how Johnson winning the WWE Championship would impact the product since there would be no titles defenses at houses shows for over two months, and also add a new issue of whether he would defend the title at the February pay-per-view event, Elimination Chamber. Not awarding Johnson would rectify this problem.

Though the importance of the WWE Championship and the World Heavyweight Championship has diminished in recent years, one of the primary reasons that creative has yet to unify the belts is because they feel a title match should close out all house shows.

it is not good to give The Rock the title, yup as it said, but also its not good to give it to the undertaker because its not his days, also if he take it he will lose it so fast, in other way, Cm Punk should not win and end the streak, The undertaker gave us very high quality matches in last 4 WM, and he can do one also and win it to make it to WM 30 in 2014, they can make the big show or sheamus try to defeat him but no title include the match.

Andrew

I really like this idea (as do the majority of people I watch MNR with). The Rock, while great, wouldn’t be able to do enough appearances between the Royal Rumble and Wrestlemania. Punk winning and retaining the title, after defeating, Del Rio, Cena, Ryback, The Miz, Jericho and Bryan, and defending it against “the streak” and The Undertaker would be nothing short of amazing. From a business standpoint, if we apply the basic law of diminishing returns, it’s likely that the difference between Rock-Cena II with and without the title would be marginal, at best. But for Punk-‘Taker, turning the match into “title verse streak” would definitely boost ratings and the buy rate.

Andrew

Also, if you ran a linear regression model measuring the elasticity between viewership/buy rate and each of the two matches with and without the title involved I’d imagine you’d find buy rates for Rock-Cena II more inelastic, meaning viewership would be less dependent on whether the title is involved, which inherently makes sense as Cena fans (mostly between 6-14) will watch Cena no matter what and Rock fans will likely watch no matter what.